You may have noticed we released details of our new pedal recently – a fuzz/octave called “Fuzztration”. Instead of waffling on about the origins of it, the circuit, and the tones within; I’m going to talk about the name, the look and the marketing angle of the Fuzztration as this is quite a departure for us, we are breaking our mould somewhat with it – and to be honest, it was a long and painful journey to get to this point.

This is a pedal that has been in discussion for a while and the earliest reference I have of it in my “Wampler: Pedals – Logos” folder is from July 2017. Brian had been talking about it for probably a year or so before that… so, when we say we throw stuff around for literally years before a release, this is a case in point!

In order to tell the story properly, I have to give away a little of the process. When Brian has decided on a circuit, and what controls it is going to have, he cracks on and breadboards it. Once that is done and he is happy with it the tones/response etc, he forwards all the relevant information to our chief engineer Jake Steffes to ensure his vision of tone will work in the confines a pedal. I can clearly remember Brian telling me about it and describing it as “it’s a versatile fuzz, rea thick and the octave can kinda sound like the solo tone from KWS ‘Blue on Black’ tone, as well as all the regular stuff”. With that in mind, the original concept of the pedal was to be called “Blue on Black”.

As soon as the pedal has been allocated its place in the release schedule; Brian, Alex and I started on the long a tortuous process of naming the thing. Avi, head of production and distribution, had a stock of matte black powder so it was decided really quickly that it would be that colour, because ‘cool’.

Jake forwarded me the controls and it was clear it was going to be “deluxe” sized so I did what I always do, take a look at the market and see what’s cool and what isn’t. One of my favourite dirt pedal concepts is Jamie’s exquisite Acapulco Gold with the massive ‘gain’ knob. So, I decided early on a large knob controlling the clipping would look great. Other than that, it was pretty straightforward. 2 stomps, 4 other knobs, 2 switches, power and in/out jacks. I quickly spoke with Jake about putting a big knob for the clipping, and he said it would be cool, so… I wanted it on the top right with the other controls on a nice shallow W formation to the left. The first thing I had to do was to find a larger knob that would still look like a Wampler and fortunately for me, Alex told me that the knobs on the Bravado were the same as our pedal ones, just bigger. So I made him measure one... With these measurements confirmed, Jake laid it out and we quickly had the basic layout in the bag. Jake nailed this process and I tip my hat in his general direction. I try to change things around a little now and then so I requested a blue and green LED because I’m kinda bored of red and blue and I knew that this was coming on the Paisley Deluxe (that was still months out from being released) and we’ve used it many times before. This is always a gamble, as we didn’t know what the rest of the pedal is going to look like yet.

Once Jake has laid it out, he sends me the ‘drill pattern’ and I can transfer it to the templates I have in photoshop and start to work out the look/name. These are pictures from Aug 9th 2017, three concepts for the Wampler “Blue On Black” – Only one was ever printed, and it looked… well… crap.

From here, must have been April ’18 (it was decided a long time ago it would be released some time forward so it went on the back burner) I was distracted and inspired by a piece of music by my favourite composer, Camille Saint-Saëns - Danse Macabre. I simply LOVE this piece of music, it’s dark and deliciously spooky which I thought would be amazing for a fuzz pedal. I went as far as a couple of mock ups for it, but unfortunately, it just didn’t work. I would have loved to have the first demo recorded to be that piece of music on a Fuzz/Octave though… I might do it one day, just for the lololz.

The name was abandoned. From there, I thought of Valkyrie, for two reasons. Lisa and I had just watched “Vikings” on Amazon and I’m a long-time player of the game Clash of Clans which has Valks in it. I actually really liked this, as it was dark and nasty, aggressive and cool. Two concepts were quickly done, and the one I liked (on the right) was drawn by an extremely talented artist from Seattle called Stacy LeFevre – we couldn’t agree on terms so the concept, name and design, were put to rest.

So, we are back to the drawing board once again. At this point, myself, Brian, Alex and my partner in designcrime – Richard Oliver were going quite insane. Frustration levels were reached and breached and there would be literally weeks between conversations. Names did go back and forward, but we were so annoyed with it we distracted ourselves with other releases that were more pressing. I love working with Richard as he understands me (bonus) and has become a great friend during this time. In fact, it was Richard who nailed the artwork for the Pantheon (which was named by Matt Kimes). After the Valkyrie idea had been shelved, Richard came up with a ‘big list o’ fuzz names’ – some great, some silly…. Even at one point suggesting “Chewbacca; and have the octave switch called ‘Laugh it up Fuzz Ball’, it’ll be funny if not really really litigious and not in a good kind of way.”

Another name came forward at this point, I think from our good friend Frank Falbo, and we still like it even though it’s been decided not to be used for this pedal. So, I’m not going to talk about it here! I have it in mind for a couple of pedals down the line… time will tell.

At this point we were extremely frustrated with it. We’d all had enough. No one dared mention it for a while, apart from Brian who would remind us it needed to be done. We are now in about July or so. Texts were coming and going because it was getting to the point where we couldn’t avoid this any longer…

Whilst on holiday in Tenerife, Richard got a text from Brian saying we are still struggling for the name for the fuzz, and everyone felt their creative well for this name had run a bit dry… so, he followed Marketing 101 and asked the nearest young person for help. This happened to be his daughter, Leila, who was 15 at the time and we’ve been told has impeccable musical taste (despite hating on Pink Floyd and Iron Maiden which in my book is a travesty and I blame that squarely on the parents). She came up with a couple that were funny, then randomly said “Fuzztration”. He initially dismissed it but then thought - wait - that's EXACTLY the feeling we get from naming this pedal… That day, I received this in messenger from Richard:

I instantly copied and pasted his message and text it to Brian and Alex and we all thought that it was a killer name. The next hurdle was the graphic and the logo. Richard asked what I thought and said something along the lines of “Some kind of artsy vision of someone who’s screaming, or got their head in their hands or something, I just need to find the thing that triggers it in my head”. I really wanted a screaming face because Edvard Munch is a genius and that’s one of the most symbolic pictures of all time, also it perfectly fitted the process of getting here. And then there’s Pink Floyd… The Wall. The symbolism of both are iconic.

Here is the process Richard and I went through – I resisted the scream originally, as we were at the time keeping our designs simpler.

So, images 1-4 are me getting annoyed and it not working, 5 is me working towards the font to use with the new name, 6 is Richard’s concept for the screaming man I had previously mentioned (that was a strong contender) and then through my thought process of the face and the colour scheme. I wanted to put a heart beat on it as the more frustrated I got, the more my heart started to pound… The face is a mixture of my face from this picture (taken August 29) and one from a free site on the internet mashed up and put together with elements of both - you’ll have to work out which bits are me and which bits aren’t.

Here are the print tests. As you can see, the eyes didn’t work, nor did Richard’s face, but my screamer did. Once we had decided on the knob colour, on we went...

As this pedal is hot on the heels of one of our most successful releases ever, I knew that we had to go big on the teasing. So, if you scroll back through our social media for the last month or so, you will see that fuzzes are mentioned a lot more. Brian starts to talk about fuzzes on the podcast, he even mentioned this one a few times. I started to tease the graphic style and on Oct 31st I released this graphic for the Halloween moment of silliness that contained literally hundreds of lines of text in the back ground, I talk about everything in there... there are song lyrics, undying declarations of love for my wife and kids, my desire for a holiday, a new amp… so many things – including a little troll moment for one of our customers, Jeff. Within the lines of text were also clear and large hints about this next pedal release, I’m quite delighted and annoyed that literally NO ONE zoomed in to check.

So, here it is, the Fuzztration and that was the cliff notes version of how it came to be called this. There is quite a lot missing, because I don’t have records of it all as much of it was deleted in several fits of rage along the way. A lot of people have been asking us for a LONG time that we needed to release something kinda muff like, but make it better. Based on the work we did on the Tumnus and Pantheon, I was very confident that Brian can take the concept of a classic circuit, and make it infinitely better. And he did.

A very, very, VERY interesting vlog was released from Brian today, and it is about a subject that has perplexed me for many years. It’s directly related to one of the most common and least thought our retorts on social media “Tone is all in the fingers, man”. This may be a controversial subject, but you know, what’s life without a little controversy now and then?!

As many of you who have regularly read my blog over the years will know, I came up through the local scene by being a prolific jammer. Back in the day (not so much anymore, unfortunately) several local pubs would either have straight up jam nights or booked bands to play with the sole intention of knowing it was going to end up as a beer sozzled jam with everyone just playing with everyone else. Not only was this immense fun for all involved, but as a young player this was an invaluable learning ground for me and made me the player I am today. The most prolific I regularly went to were the Sunday afternoon gig at “The Old Firehouse” and the now legendary local jam night at “The Bowling Green”, both in my hometown - Exeter, Devon. UK. The great thing about these jams/gigs was the fact that every week the same faces would turn up and a carousel of about 50 other players that made it when they felt like it would also turn up, so over a long period of time, I got extremely familiar with all kinds of players. As we are all friends, most people couldn’t be bothered to bring their own instruments and once the beer had started to be consumed, everyone just played whatever was there, at all times. Because of this, I heard the same players on various pieces of gear multiple times.

What did I learn during these years… well, in the times I can remember clearly (remember, beer), every player had their own style and technique, obviously, which gave their playing a certain character and this character always shone through. But, their overall sound was determined by the gear they were using. When you really listened, and I mean really listened, you ‘could’ say that tone was in the fingers, but I think it’s actually a different word that should be used here… maybe a couple of words. Those are ‘character’ and ‘personality’.

Here is a great example, Joe Satriani was recorded using extremely ‘low rent’ gear playing one of his more famous tracks, “Surfing With The Alien”. Please, give it a watch…

And, in case you didn’t read the description, Joe is playing ‘Pignose’ (I know, I’ve never heard of them making guitars either) S style (single coils), a Digitech RP200 into a Peavey Backstage 30. Joe is using the Wah on the Digitech and I expect amp modelling etc from the unit as well, so… you know. It’s not going to sound like his rig when he’s touring/recording!

When you watch it, there is, without doubt, all of Joe’s character and personality is shining through. There is no doubt that it’s Joe playing. It’s in the way he picks, the way he attacks the strings and the way he uses vibrato is what is defining the music that is coming from the gear, but the gear is still defining the tone… unfortunately. When you listen hard, the tone is quite nasty, and I’m quite glad it’s only a phone that’s capturing it as if this was mic’ed properly it would sound sharp and gnarly. But, you know, it still sounds like Joe. Up to a point.

Here’s the conclusion I’ve come to over the many many years I’ve been seeing the same players playing their own and different gear over and over. Fundamentally, your tone that the audience hears will be defined by the gear you are playing. Because the gear will be dictating how much clipping you have, how much gain that works alongside that clipping, the EQ before, during and after that clipping, the type of guitar you are playing and what pickups it is – style of bridge – wood…, how the amp is constructed, the speakers you use and their size, and all the parts variables that go into each of those and just about everything else… the list is endless. However, an accomplished player will still maintain their musical character and personality regardless of the gear it is being played on. So, the picking hand attack, the vibrato, the note choices… will all be the same. Does this define tone? I don’t think it does, it defines who they are as a musician, but not their note as such.

Here is the video with Brian and Travis playing the same gear.

The interesting things that come out of this video ties up with what I was discussing above. You can hear Travis’ playing style and also Brian’s shining through, but fundamentally, their tone was changing each time they swapped amps. They keep discussing Brian’s pick attack (as he is quite a hard player on the right hand) compared to Travis’ (as he is the opposite, really quite gentle) so in that regard, the attack and bite from these amps is coming from the player, but the core tone is coming from the gear.

I think I’d like to make the case for completely and utterly banning the phrase “tone is in the fingers” and have anyone saying it severely punished. I don’t know what that punishment should be, but I’m pretty certain we can decide on a case by case basis as and when it is used as an argument!

I would like to propose it be amended to the following statement. “Musical personality and character will always shine through regardless of the gear it’s being played on”… but, you know, that’s not quite as catchy and by no means as divisive and controversial, and as I said above, what’s life without a little controversy now and then?

When you are lurking on as many gear forums that I am (it’s no wonder my sanity is often questioned) you start to notice patterns forming, you see the same questions come up, and quite often you get to see some great answers and also some terrible ones. I was explaining to Mrs Wilding a couple of weeks ago that at times it feels like I’m in a room with about 100,000 other people and I can hear all the conversations in the room at the same time… Sometimes, the conversations just pass you by but others stick out, especially when you hear the same conversation happening over and over again.

One of those topics that comes up time and time again is “boosts” – the different kinds and where to place them, even which one… so I’m going to write an answer at my level, which is idiot level, to try to explain it all. This may contain information you already know, but hopefully, it will contain some information that you haven’t consolidated yourself yet so there may be something useful in here for you!

When you boil it all down, there are (in my opinion), 3 kinds of boosts that guitarists favour. A clean boost, a treble boost and what’s often classed as a dirty boost, this could be called a coloured boost, or a tone shaping boost or a multitude of other names. The main consideration when deciding which is for you is what you fundamentally want it to do, and where you plan to put it in your chain. My own live rig runs two boosts, one pretty well up the front and one right at the back. Unsurprisingly, they are both Wampler – the Tumnus Mini sits at the front (after the compression and pre-gain modulations) before the main gain stages and the dB+ is right at the back (well, it sits before the reverb pedal but that is an always-on pedal so it doesn’t count!) and acts as a literal volume boost.

The thing that kinda makes me smile is when someone asks online “Recommend me a clean booster” and the thread instantly fills up with shouts of “EP Booster”, “Tumnus”, “TS” and the like and more often than not no one will stop to ascertain what they need, it may be that they need a dirtier boost or not. I would say that 99% of the time the dirtier version will be better, but you know….

Clean boost.The clean boost does just that. It boosts the output of the signal coming in before it goes out. A lot of them are sold on the basis of a HUGE amount of boost, and for me, that kind of goes against the intention of them. Putting a clean boost in front of your gain stages will just increase the signal going in causing them to clip quicker, so you kind of get more of the same – where’s the fun in that? So, in my opinion, clean boosts are much better situated at the very back of your chain to ensure that when you go in for a solo, everyone can hear you over the rest of the band. Of course, this is not a hard and fast rule, a lot of people love their clean boost in front (especially if you are driving amp gain) because, well… they love their tone. So, happy days. But, once you start enjoying the beauties of a dirty boost it’s hard to ever go back to clean for pre-gain. In a nutshell, the classic clean boost will not add any clipping and it will NOT change the EQ of the signal, as EQ and clipping are so closely connected when you think about pedal dirt, it’s hard to separate them fully.

Treble Boost.Kind of self-explanatory… takes the higher ranges of the tone and boosts it, this will in turn cause whatever sits behind it to clip into overdrive much quicker based on the frequencies that are hitting it.

‘Dirty’ Boost.Now, this is where the real fun starts, well it does for me anyway. Thinking about it, I actually use 2 dirty boosts in my rig as I run the c2 side of the Paisley Drive Deluxe into c1 and only tend to use it for high gain stuff… So, why do I do this? Well, it’s all about the options it gives me with tone shaping, and how it makes my guitar feel under my hands. The amps I play with are set at totally clean at all times, so when it’s just the Tumnus that is on it kind of gives it a little nudge, adds very little gain (clipping) and the volume is set to unity. So, it’s not really pushing the amp in any direction, it just throws a gentle EQ curve across everything while giving it a little bite. It’s barely noticeable on the clean sound, but when it’s put on when the PaisleyDog is engaged, it fills it out SO much I can’t really describe it. Everything is warmer, fatter and it really pushes it forward. Not in a way that it makes my guitar sound louder, just fuller. When I then kick in Paisley Drive side (which is effectively set at full TS mode) the combined boosting of the TS frequencies and the K style frequencies produce a wall of sound that is huge. As I use a programmable looper in my rig, I have the following combinations available to me…

Now, the Paisley Drive is set somewhat different than the Tumnus, it’s set just above unity volume with a little more gain applied so when it hits the Paisley Dog side, there is an increase of overall gain as well.

With this in mind, how does all this work technically? The best way to think about dirty boosts is that it’s not about adding clipping to the chain, well, it is, but it’s more about the EQ shapes that they provide into your core signal. EQ is everything! As the Tumnus is a K style and the Paisley Drive is TS style (in one of the modes, and that’s the mode I use it in), I’m adding a largish amount of EQ to my tone when they are kicked in. The TS brings in a hump that centred at around 723hz and the Tumnus centred around 1k (these can and will change when you use the tone controls so that’s not gospel), the change in the character and depth of the main overdriven tone is quite remarkable. It does bring in a little clipping (gain), but you know, what it mostly brings is a jump in response from the EQ stacks, so I can easily control the feedback point and sustains for ever. When people look at the settings on my pedals they are quite surprised how low the gain is set on each, because when they are stacked, the inherent EQ shapes are bringing the gain that’s already there front and centre, with a much more 3D depth... that’s not how it works, but that’s how it feels.

If you are thinking about a booster pedal, think about what you really need it to do and where you should place it in your chain. Are you after a literal boost for your solos or are you looking for something that changes your tone into something else. The vast majority of people want the latter I think, so the choice then is which voicing you want to bring in – most people instantly think about a TS or a K, but then again there treble boosters (that explode those higher frequencies that bring the character of the subsequent drives/gain stages to a whole new place), or pedals like EP booster that bring another element of width and fullness of its own character, I’ve seen a lot of boards that have an EP at the start and at the back, purely because the warmth it brings also sounds great as an end of chain boost as well.

As I’ve now been using the double boost pre-gain for quite some time now, I’m pretty certain I won’t change as it works so well, but, the older I get the more I start to think of downsizing, so who knows? Maybe we need to do a triple pedal that utilizes both kinds in a single box with one killer core gain stage at the end (I wish I was famous, I would totally have that as my signature pedal). With all this in mind… what is a clean boost in your mind – it is about clipping? Is it about volume? Should EQ play a part in this?

Well hey hey! Normally, I don't write many of these blogs, normally because i'm too busy doing the youtube's and the breadboarding (aka circuit design). Plus, Jason and Alex are way more interesting than I am.

However.

In January a combination of things happened to me, and us as a company. One of those being that our company became recognized by probably the worlds best business guru, Gary Vaynerchuk. I know, I know, you don't care about business, you care about tone, right? Of course, we all do! Regardless, I wanted to take a minute and write a piece that we can reference back to every time we get business questions (and to be honest, we get A LOT of questions about how we do our marketing). As you read the following paragraphs, please understand that I'm coming at this from a place of love, and a place of wanting to help you if you are starting a business, trying to run your guitar/amp/pedal/whatever business, or just feeling like things overall are feeling impossible... like it's impossible to get ahead, and improve whatever it is that you're going through right now. I also want to point out first and foremost: The business isn't just me, it's Jason, Alex, Jake, Cathy, Jeff, Jerry, Amanda (of course), Travis, Max, and just about everyone that's ever worked for us.

That being said, I bring you: "Why good things never come easy."

Don't let anyone ever tell you "it can't be done", or that something is impossible. In 2005 or so, I started writing a few books to help guitar players learn how to modify their guitar pedals. It was intended to be a book that would simplify electronics and bring it to a bigger audience than just Engineering nerds (no offense nerds :p ). A little later I started building pedals and eventually quit my work as a remodeling subcontractor to focus full time on all things guitar tone related. So many people tried to discourage me, even some that were close to me.... but I kept going.

Around 2010 or so I learned of a guy named Gary Vaynerchuk, and bought a book called "Crush it!". His book excited me so much that I drove all of my employees, friends, and family nuts with his ideas and business principles, and insisted that we follow his lead. I think I've bought that book (and his newer ones) about 50 times and sent it to various people over the past years in hopes it would help them actually.

Fast forward to 2016... I found out that one of our customers knew Gary himself after I posted something about loving GaryVee's videos, who invited me up to their office, which lead to a chance to meet Gary (AND be in one of his videos)...

...which lead to Gary asking if I'd like to be part of his next book. That book is available today, and to all of my entrepreneurial friends: You've got to check it out - it's fantastic!Here it is... Oh, and make sure you check out page 48

However, that's not why I'm writing this. I'm saddened, humbled, and overall more than anything... grateful.

I'm saddened that people still don't believe in themselves. That they talk theirselves out of trying, out of taking a risk, the negative self talk defeats them before they even TRY to start anything. Even talking to people at other companies at NAMM, I'm astonished. When they ask how we do what we do, I have no problems telling them. The most common response: "Wow, that seems like a lot of work!"

Are you kidding me?! Seriously? If you own a business and you aren't going to give it 1000% you're going to get beat. Your competition, at some point in time, will take your lunch money and shove you down in the dirt (metaphorically of course). This applies to musicians, and writers, and creatives of all types. It applies to high school seniors who are wondering what to do with their life. It applies to those in college who feel stuck, or are doing what "Mom and Dad said I should do" yet have no passion for that area in which they (or more correctly their parents) have chosen.

Success is simple: BUST YOUR ASS AND BE PATIENT. That's all it takes. Work harder than everyone else, like your life depends on it. Do everything possible to improve your situation. Are you having money problems? Do something about it. Throw out the TV, and sleep less. Learn new skills. Are you upset because your coworker makes more money than you? Do something about it. Change. Change. Change! You can't have change in your life without changing yourself. But remember - life is a marathon, not a sprint. Don't expect some magical way to "Get rich/find love/become successful with these 3 easy steps!"

I'm completely humbled and grateful for our customers and friends who believe in us. We exist purely to make your world a little better. Granted, we aren't curing diseases here, but it's incredibly satisfying to meet those who have just a little bit more joy in their life because they are coming home after a long day's work and playing on that new piece of guitar gear that makes them happy. Or, they write a song and send it out to the world and that song affects other people. Grateful isn't a strong enough word. Just please understand that all of the youtube videos I do, all of the podcasts, all of the facebook, instagram, twitter, and snapchat posts that my team and I put out - they are for you. They are for your enjoyment, entertainment, and/or education. You'll notice we don't "sell, sell, sell" on 99% of our posts. We don't look at our business that way. We believe we are in the people business, not the guitar pedal business. I go to bed thinking how can I make your life better with what I have to work with and I wake up with the same thought. For now that looks like guitar pedals, but who knows - maybe it's amps, or guitars, or VR instruments, or something entirely different in the future.

To all those that have helped us get here, and to those who work for me, have worked for me in the past, and/or put up with me, I'm indebted to you.

Following on from bDub’s video about the 12 things he’s learned making videos for YouTube (see below), I thought I’d piggyback that and make 12 things I’ve learned being the main social media guy for Wampler in the last 7 years. For those of you who don’t know, I’m the guy that has been the constant with the social media for Wampler since early 2011. Other people have worked with me during that time, most notably Alex who’s been with us for almost 3 years now, but, most of it has been me and my warped sense of humour.

People have opinions and they think they are facts. People are passionate about music, and they are passionate about their opinions associated with them. Especially when it comes to favourite guitar players. They may love the blues, or shredders, or whatever, but there are a LOT of people who misunderstand the concept of opinions. They have the final word and are prepared to destroy all those who dare to disagree! Let’s face it, we’ve all got into arguments on social media over pointless crap with strangers, but recently it appears to have hit new highs. My ban hammer finger seems to get twitchy much quicker these days.

Memes are made to be stolen. One of the things that has caused me the most headaches is irate people shouting (well, typing in caps) “YOU STOLE THIS FROM MY BLOG WOT I MADES IN 2013” or something. The unfortunate thing about meme’s and graphics is that once they are on the internet, they spread like wildfire and it only takes one person to download it and put it somewhere else and all traces of the originator are lost forever. Subsequently, there have been times when things I’ve made have come full circle and come back to us, which makes me chuckle, and there have been cases when well-known outlets have been downloading stuff from us directly to reshare… It’s a difficult one, and one I try not to get grumpy about, but… you know… sometimes when a repeat offender does it over and over it becomes obvious and I let myself down and make a snide comment on their thread. I should know better really.

Everyone thinks that you are the face of the company and you better not show any trace of personality. This is one that happens to me often. I quite often get a *insert expletive here* who thinks he can come on to my own social media presences and tell me off for putting them down when they act like an arse to either me or my actual real-life friends. I’ve been called many names, most recently a Nazi. As you can imagine, that wasn’t particularly nice but I’m a big boy now and sticks and stones and all that...

Everyone thinks that because you work for a company like Wampler it’s all jamming with Brent Mason, making fancy meme’s and drinking fine wine with Seymour Duncan at NAMM and nothing else. Nah… it’s mainly planning strategy for marketing, B2B selling, watching market trends, trying to predict market trends, justifying decisions made about the current market, the future market and maintaining relationships. Basically, it’s about moving little grey boxes around the world. Sometimes you get the fun stuff, but it’s really really rare.

Everyone is a world leading expert. On everything. No matter what evidence you place in front of them about running a business, they still don’t see why they should buy a pedal for $200 when they can buy a soldering iron and parts from “Hanks fishing tackle and Radio Spares for $35 and making it their damn self and it being just as damned good”.

People think that who you are online is who you are in real life. What people have to remember is that working from home and doing online stuff can be kinda boring. When I get bored I partake in the age-old English past time of taking the piss. Although I do it in my real life, I pretty certain I’m not the stereotypical grumpy Englishman people think I am, or appear to be – here’s the thing, I often have to play bad cop to Alex’s good cop when dealing with trolls and people who don’t know when to stop talking. I dunno, maybe I am grumpy… but my wife tells me I’m not, and I’m not man enough to disagree with her on anything.

People will tell the world with righteous indignation about bad things with a company on social media before even venturing into speaking with the company about the issue. Or, they will expect you to be online to sort their problem out 24/7 and have the answer for you in seconds. How many times have you seen “I’ve not received a response from them when I mailed them”… most of the time it will be 2 am on a Sunday, they’ve emailed you through the website and 10 minutes later they’ve gone out in public slamming you for the problem and your unprofessional way of not getting back to them. It’s massively frustrating, but you know, I’ve got to poop at some point!

People will look for a correlation of events and try to draw conclusions from them, and they’ll do it all the time. “Yeah, well, Brian said he likes Uni-Vibes and next doors cat looks like Brian’s, he said the word vibe and wet in the same paragraph in a video in 2016 so I KNOW that a WampVibe is coming this year!”. Or something like that. You’ll know when stuff is coming because we’ll tell you. I mean, it’s not in my nature to tease people at all or anything like that **ahem**

You get free stuff, all the time. I expect some of you have seen the pictures I post online of ‘my’ gear. The main thing is, it ain’t my gear. It belongs to the company (and others). I actually own 2 electric guitars, about 5 or 6 pedals (none of them are overdrives or distortions) and no amp. So, when I do gigs and take amazing gear, people think I’ve got amazing gear coming out of my arse. I don’t. I’m just lucky that this particular job means I have to have it here, for marketing. So, you know, it ain’t all bad…

You spend all day chatting on social media. This is the one that confuses me the most. I am prolific on social media when I’m working, within the realms of my job – watching and analysing. But, once I take the work hat off, I disappear completely for a period of time. I am a family man and I protect the relationship with my wife and kids fiercely, so when I walk away from the computer, you won’t catch me on Facebook. I work from home and it’s 7 days a week, virtually 365 days a year, making multiple posts over multiple platforms for multiple brands. I keep in touch with a lot of our artists and dealers on FB and most of my relationship building is done there, so when I walk away, I walk away. It’s that, or I’ll end up being divorced.

Fundamentally, most people (and companies) do not understand the concept of social media marketing. Which, in terms of other companies is great!! Hahahaha – KIDDING! But, I spend a lot of time watching and learning on social media, seeing what others are doing, analysing what we are doing and then making decisions on how to proceed based on what I see. I do have to say though, it’s a big rush when I see some of the biggest companies in the world blatantly taking our style and doing their version of it. It’d be better if I got 10% of the fee though! I speak to a lot of people who are allegedly marketing experts and most of them don’t get it. Don’t get demographics, don’t get what it means to try to get into people’s heads in the best possible way. A few do, and when I find them, I talk to them a LOT!

A lot of people want to take your job. I understand that, completely. I have a cool job and people can think they can do better. Especially on the graphical side. We’ve, well – I’ve, really honed the look of the range in recent years graphically. We made a conscious decision on our look and I’ve continued to produce the graphics according to that plan. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve read “Your pedals look shit mate” or something. It’s usually a graphic designer from the other side of the world who’s looking to get the work for themselves. Unfortunately, unless they want to do all the other stuff I do as well, it probably won’t happen. Because you see, we don’t all have one job at Wampler, we have about 4!

Thank you for listening to me ramble and for your support of this blog, this is my first one of 2018 and I hope to be filling your eyes and minds with more irrelevant crap in the future! Despite what I have written above, I genuinely adore my job and interacting with people as much as I do. It's one of life's simple joys to be able to connect with so many people, from so many cultures, from so many countries, each and every day...

... and, there is a lot more to this, but I'm not going to give all my secrets away!

As you might expect, one of the things we hear a lot from some people is “How can you charge $200 for a pedal that I can buy the parts for, for less than $50, and make it myself?”

Right, let’s get comfy and pick this apart piece by piece. I’ll do my best to remain objective and not end up in a socio political rant about ethics, but you know, if you poke the bear sometimes you get bitten! But, I’ll try to keep my muzzle on and remain professional! lololz.

Let’s take the Thirty Something. A pedal that we sell for $239 USD. The first thing you have to remember is that Brian didn’t wake up one day and have it all mapped inside his head, he didn’t just do a “Let It Be” and have it ready from a dream. I kid you not that Brian took almost 3 years to design that circuit, it went through more prototypes than any other Wampler I know of (and I’m pretty certain I’m up to speed on this stuff), it was tweaked, changed, restarted, thrown in the bin so many times I actually stopped asking about it. When it was finally ready I remember Brian saying “I’m still not 100% happy with it, but I just can’t see how I can make it any closer”. That being said, when it arrived in Wildling territory and I plugged it in, I was staggered how it reacted and how it felt. I still think it remains the benchmark in AIAB pedals, it does the job perfectly. And I was brought up playing Edge, Queen, The Beatles and Hank Marvin songs… so, I’m kinda fussy with VOX tones.

Thinking about that, and thinking about how Brian is considered in his field, can you begin to imagine how much investment that is? To import a design engineer and have them work at something on and off for 3 years would be hundreds of thousands of dollars, I can’t comprehend how much it would be, but just think about that minute, that is a lot of R&D work, and you know, with a large family to support and employees to pay, that kind of work doesn’t pass unnoticed by the company accountant. R&D aside, then you have to imagine that once again, the designs of everything else doesn’t appear out of thin air, the pedal logo needs designing, the box art, the manual, the marketing, the demo videos, the promo shots… it’s actually quite ridiculous when you think about it, costs a bloody fortune.

Here is a picture I took for the marketing for the release of the Thirty Something. I am very lucky that I live nearManson's Guitar Shop and have a great relationship with them (they stock us). I go in, take over a corner of the shop, use their stock guitars as backing and then spend a long time photoshopping the picture to make it look like this. It all adds up!

Now, we get to parts. Brian is RIDICOUSLY fussy about parts. He will only use parts that fulfil his requirements, and there was a stage at one point in time when we were ditching 2/3rds of a certain part because they didn’t come up to scratch - mere mortals like me can’t hear the difference, but let’s face it, I’m not Brian Wampler, his ears are better than mine and I expect most of yours as well, so you have to budget that as well.

So, let’s get back to the meat of this. You will find websites all over the internet that ‘kindly’ reverse every pedal ever made and post the schematic for all to plagiarise, errmmm, I mean “study". So, once we’ve spent ages designing and marketing a pedal and released it, someone can then probably go to their favorite online parts store and order the parts, an enclosure and get pretty close to how the original is. I say pretty close, because I can guarantee that the components won’t be to the spec Brian demands, it won’t be laid out as well and let’s face it, I expect the basic soldering won’t be that good. We stand by our 5 year guarantee, I bet the places the parts are bought from don’t!

Let’s now look at this from another angle. And throughout this, I’m not going to mention any prices, because people will jump on it, but just think about where we are and what we are doing in this, and where you can buy it. We are not a retailer. We do not sell to the general public (we do offer direct sales through our site, but they account for next to nothing in term of units moved compared to our international sales team). We are a manufacturer. We manufacture a product, and then sell it to people who sell it through their own stores. Sometimes we sell it to a distributor who then sells it to a dealer… taking local and international taxes, shipping, the price goes up. Then I must mention the 5 year guarantee again… So, if you want to try a product in store, have that store stay open to offer you a service, you see where we, and everyone else, is coming from. Having said that, some pedals are overpriced for what they are. I’m not going to mention anything or anyone specifically here, but there are pedals out there that are basic reworked clones, with minimal R&D, with a crappy box, labelled with one of those crappy Embosser Label Maker gun things that are for sale direct from manufacturers that are silly prices, but that’s their conscience, not ours!

Made in USA. What does that mean? You may have noticed we’ve shifted from Made in USA to Built in USA. Why I hear you ask? (and to be fair, it’s another question we get asked a lot at the moment.) Well, to be able to say “Made in USA” with complete honesty means that every component is made in the USA, and as far as I know (and I like to think I’m up to speed) most parts are impossible to source, let alone in the numbers we need them, from the USA. So, we source parts – as does EVERYONE else, from around the world - we just wear that information on our sleeves. The same burden of consistency and quality is applied, and we use only the very best. I would say that if a pedal is sourced from USA components (if it was actually possible) you’d be looking at a pedal that is at least 3 or 4 times the price, and you can imagine how many of them we’d sell! (worth noting that technically, it’s illegal for any pedal company to say “Made in the USA” due to the reasons above. We just found this out recently and changed the wording to be in accordance with US law).

When you think about a $199.97 pedal (also: inflation. www.usinflationcalculator.com a pedal that costs $199 today would have sold for $107 in 1990. Ever since 2007, we’ve had a main price of about $199 unless it’s a deluxe pedal. Accounting for inflation, that pedal SHOULD cost $235.10 in 2017, yet we’ve never raised that 199 price), remove the dealer margin, shipping, taxes and everything else (I’m not going to even go to how we manage to sell our stuff for virtually the same price all over the world, give or take $30 or so dollars) then start to think about production costs, there isn’t a lot of room to think about R&D and then the guarantee period. Now do the same with a pedal that is $149, $129 or $99 - think about how much it costs to build and how many compromises have to be made in those price reductions – kinda makes you wonder doesn’t it. Strip it back, work it out, and then you think about the Built in USA (as our stuff is) you’ll see that not only are we bringing you a quality USA product, but paying quality USA salary for the guys who design, build, test, market, sell and repair (which isn’t very often thankfully) our stuff… Then look at the guys who will sell you a clone of a pedal that is still in production for $50. Do you think that will give you the same pedal? Do you think that will encourage companies like us to continue to make quality products that will inspire you to sound the best you can do?

We get a lot of questions about breadboarding. It is an essential for any DIYer. Using software from 123d.circuits.io, we are able to give you the following tutorial on how to build a voltage amplifier circuit, or as many guitarists call it, a JFET booster. This is a basic breadboard layout. The battery, of course, represents your power supply, but any power supply will work.

The top and bottom two rows are all connected horizontally.

In the middle section, the holes are all connected vertically. This is important to remember, as this is key to how our signal will flow.

First thing we will do is run power into the board. We accomplish this by running a wire from the positive lead on the battery snap to one of the top rows. It can be any hole in that line, we just chose the closest. That entire row is now 9 volts power. And you do the same with the negative feed to the other row. That entire row becomes our ground.

If you are building a circuit using op amps, you will want to run power to both sides of the board. This is done by using a jumper wire from the positive row and the ground to the bottom two rows.

We are going to need an input and an output jack. Heat up that soldering gun. You will need to solder wire to the lugs on the jack. Notice how the negative lug is connected to the ring? This is where you will connect ground. The positive lug, which is connected to the tip, carries your signal into the signal chain.

We will now run a wire from the positive lug to one of our columns in the middle section. You would then run a wire from the negative lug to ground.

Now that we have the basics in place, we want to start this circuit out with a J201 JFET transistor. Notice how the three legs fit in three different rows.

Next we will need to add a .022 capacitor to the input.

Next we will place a 1k resistor in parallel, in the same row, with the capacitor.

Now we want to run a jumper wire to the first leg of the JFET.

The middle pin of the JFET can be given many different values dependent on what frequency response you want or how much gain you desire from the circuit. You can use any size resistor, however we will use a 1k resistor for this demo. We need to attach one end of the resistor to ground and the other to a hole in the middle section. We will then run a jumper to the middle leg of the transistor.

Now we need to run power to the JFET. We do this by attaching it to out 9v line and then to a hole in the middle. Again we need to use a jumper wire to get to the third leg of the JFET.

This is a little tricky here. As this resistor value will be dependent on what is needed to get a 4.5 reading on a voltage meter.

To check your voltage, you will need to attach the black probe to ground, and the red probe to the powered pin of the JFET. Then trade in resistors until you get a reading of 4.5 minimum.

It does not need to be 4.5 exactly, but I don’t like to go below that. Generally 4.5-5 volt is where you would like to be.

Okay, so the transistor has power and is working, but we need sound. Now we will add a capacitor where the power is coming in at the JFET. So we will connect it with the jumper wire that is going to the third pin on the transistor.

The other leg of the capacitor is where the sound will be coming out to your output jack. (Remember, when connecting your jacks to hook your negative to ground)

Warning: When you connect this breadboard to your amp it is going to be very loud compared to your usual guitar signal. This is because we have not added a volume pot yet. So let’s add a potentiometer. There are two types, wired and plug-in. For this demo we will use a wired type. We will be using a 500k for this circuit.

We will connect the third lug to the output of the capacitor. The first lug will go to ground and the second lug will go to a random hole in the board and then out to our output jack.

You may notice an added resistor in the diagram there. Very observant grasshopper. That is a 1 meg resistor that we forgot to add. It is attached to the first leg of the transistor, and then jumpered to ground. Our bad. So if we were to translate this to a schematic it would look like this.

As you can see, it would run input to capacitor to resistor to ground to JFET to ground. R5 is going to change in value as you bias it to reach 4.5 volts, then the signal continues to our capacitor (c4) to our volume pot to negative to our output. And so we just breadboarded a JFET booster. Well done!! :)